Issue
The spotlight falls on Lawn as the short search for new manager should have begun

As told by Michael Wood

If one were to believe the rumours heard then Lawn has been keen to replace McCall since the start of the season – certainly McCall’s exit can not have come as a surprise to him although reports in the T&A say the two were not speaking – and so one must assume that the joint chairman has a successor in mind. Indeed the same T&A article suggests that Lawn has been pressuring for a management change for some time.

Reading that article – the talk of a rift between manager and chairman, the talk of a suggestion of bringing in a “senior man” – Lawn sounds no different to the OMB supporters he criticised recently. Indeed for strong leadership to be shown in this situation were the exit of the manager has been brewing for so long Lawn needs to have the successor in place on Saturday, and he needs to select wisely.

Distressingly Lawn is talking about appointing an interim manager until the end of the season which calls into question any idea of the joint chairman having a plan for City’s future post-McCall.

There is no reason why – should Lawn think that Stuart McCall should have been challenging for promotion with this squad of players why supporters should accept anything other than a team that can amass (circa) 37 points or more in the next 19 games.

Without putting too fine a point on events Lawn must have thought about a new manager who he believes is an improvement and a continued spell without that man needlessly exposes the club to risk. Lawn talked about the club’s need for stability in the past yet seems to have decided against continuing that policy now.

A manager who offers obvious improvement is needed and the position Mark Lawn has City in forgoes the idea of any risk in this appointment.

The next City manager should not be a repeat failure so people like Peter Jackson – sacked twice in his career – need not apply and should not be considered if they do. What is the point of replacing a manager who you do not think will succeed with one who is proven to fail?

The list of two and three time failures who would love the chance of eighteen months getting paid at City is long. Everyone on it should be ignored.

Likewise hundreds of players who are approaching the late thirties and fancy a player/manager job will be keen to apply and City have had success down this route in the past with Roy McFarland and Trevor Cherry but the risks of appointing a rookie to a role to gain the experience you have just lost by allowing someone who has been doing that job for years to depart is far too great. The unproven, like the proven failures, should not be considered by Mark Lawn.

Lawn needs to look at the pile of CVs that will arrive on his desk and ask the question what is a good football manager? How does one decide that one is better than the other? How can one guarantee that this manager is better than the last?

Certainly that does not come with someone else’s cast off who has never succeeded nor does it come with a new appointment. It comes from finding a manager who has not only had success – Mike Walker had success at Norwich but had no idea how he had achieved it let alone how to recreate it at Everton – but had multiple successes in disparate situations, perhaps situations which are applicable to the one the Bantams offer.

Again Jackson’s name should be struck off. A manager who once got it right as Jackson could point to in his second spell at Huddersfield Town does not offer the risk free promise of improvement but rather the chance that the success he had may not be repeatable.

There is a great example in City’s own history. Paul Jewell was able to create success at City but he is not alone in coming through the ranks at a club and taking them to glory – Walker followed that route Norwich City – but tellingly Jewell was able to do it again at Wigan Athletic unlike Walker who spend eleven months on Merseyside before getting the boot. Similarly Chris Kamara brought success at Bradford City but failed at Stoke City.

A manager is not a proven success if he has only achieved once and similarly CVs that show single achievements should be put in the bin next to the unproven and the proven failures. Lawn will already no this because he will have already gone through this process in consideration of the manager he would replace McCall with.

Jewell is an outstanding candidate for the job and while he still talks in terms of Premier League he said of City after his departure while on a visit to Valley Parade “This is still my club.” Lawn could do must to restore some faith in the idea that he has an idea on how he will improve City should he state on Monday that Jewell is his number one target and that he wants to speak to him about the job.

Jewell aside very few candidates suggest themselves although another is Peter Taylor who has taken Wycombe Wanderers, Brighton & Hove Albion, Gilligham and Hull City to promotions in the past showing his ability to reproduce success. Both would be good appointments but both have done their best work when funded handsomely and both have patches of failure in their careers.

To be honest if the rumours that Lawn has been keen to replace McCall since the start of the season are the case then he should have already have had that conversation with Jewell or Taylor someone of that ilk and calibre and have him ready to take charge for the game with Grimsby at the weekend.

No unproven, no proven failures, no flash in the pan single success managers if Lawn is to convince anyone that he has a plan to improve the club.

A common phrase heard of late is that football is a results business and should that be the case then the smart football chairman looks for a manager with manifest repeated results to reduce the risk to the club.

That is if the idea in the Bradford City boardroom is about trying to make low risk improvements and not just of appeasement and getting one’s own way

If Lawn is even seen standing next to Dean Windass, Peter Jackson, Peter Beagrie, Simon Davey, Brendan Rodgers, Russell Slade, Martin Allen, Mike Newell, Gareth Southgate, Ian McParland or any of the other managers who fall into these three catagories where risk is attached to the appointment then one has to wonder what the net benefit of this process will be other than the history of the club being bent in a way that simply lets the chairman get his own way.

27 comments

While his track record undoubtedly wins him fans, I just cannot see Peter Taylor taking the job. No one really knows the financial state at VP, but surely we cannot afford Taylor’s (or Jewell’s) wages. Presumably the employment of Taylor would be expensive and also require the compensation of most of the backroom – at least those in key positions and that’s before the gaffer starts to look at the transfer market.

In this regard Taylor has form, walkingout of a newly promoted Brighton because he didn’t believe they had the infrastructure or resources for success.

As for Jewell, I really would drive him to VP myself, but honestly think he would be mad to take the job. He’s just seen Mr Bradford City, the ultimate Bantam, leave the club that loved him amid a chorus of boos and a maelstrom of discontent, especially on the message boards. Why would he risk it? He can never top reign one with a financially restricted reign two. No chance, it surely represents the most poisoned of chalices for him.

I agree that Lawn (if the rumous are true) should have already lined up a replacement, but if he hasn’t, he definitely shouldn’t rush it.

Personally I agree on most points, however Russell Slade would be there with Peter Taylor as my favourite for the post. He has had success without a lot of money in the past on more than one occassion and knows the lower divisions.

If we are talking about element of risk then that’s what Paul Jewell possesses for me. He did a fantastic job at Bradford and Wigan when bank rolled but failed at both Derby and Wednesday. That’s a 50/50 chance and we all know he’d have no money here. Furthermore they always say never go back and why would he want it. He is highly regarded here and there is more chance of him damaging that opinion than enhancing it, not to mention the fact that he struggles with the stresses of the job and could attract a much higher profile club.

That said your points about the other managers I agree with entirely, Jackson I want nowhere near our dugout, and the same for Windass and co. Anyone who mentions Beagrie is on another planet because he is blatantly not interested in management.

Therefore for me it is between Taylor and Slade, we wouldn’t be able to afford compensation for any of the like of John Coleman, Alan Knill or Keith Hill so they can be forgotten.

Paul Jewell would be my choice and we’re probably the only lower league club who he would consider managing if he’s still got the fire in his belly to do the job.Peter Taylor would also be a good appointment.I find the idea of a stop gap til the end of the season ludicrous and a possible road to disaster.I simply don’t understand the idea of someone in charge for four months when Stuart McCall was contracted for another eighteen months.This should have been sorted out at the end of the season. It seems that Lawn wanted McCall out but without a replacment lined up McCall being helped on his way by one of the Chairmen makes little sense in terms of whats best for the football club.

When will people work out that this club has no money. Nothing, not a jot, nor a bean. Talk of Jewell, Taylor or any other ‘name’ is living in cloud cuckoo land. Be prepared to be let down by a mediocre and predictable appointment of a local out-of-work has been/failure. There will be no knight in shining armour number 2 to save the other outgoing knight in shining armour; expect a Simon Davey type appointment cos we will all have to get used to it.

How can I put this? – I’ve spotted Jewell three times in the last 18 months and he seems to enjoy life these days.
Jackson celebrated far too much when he won at Valley Parade for me and he’s been a failure more recently.
But where is the next Keith Hill (or Alan Knill)?
There’s a guy doing pretty well at Farsley Celtic at the moment.
Whoever gets it, please let’s give him at least as long as Stuart got before we start wanting a change. Those who talk tactics on the T&A website because they’ve got Championship Manager on the computer are too impatient.Knill and Hill took years to get where they are.

I don’t agree that BCFC can’t finance a quality replacment manager Mark.I think Wetheralls contract is up at the end of this season and that will free up extra cash that could be used to attract a quality replacment for McCall.

Stuart is a manager who took a pay cut just to work for the club. If asked he would have probably worked for free. If Lawn has to put his hand in his own pocket to because he wanted to replace a manager who took that pay cut then so be it.

No other business replaces its most senior employee within a week. Football needs to start looking at how actual big businesses work and learn lessons from them.

Relegation doesn’t kill clubs, but hiring the wrong manager in a rush keeps a club stuck doing nothing. Look at when Arsenal hired Wenger – they waited months for him to be available before they got him (and, it might be noted, Wenger didn’t exactly have the greatest experience of actually playing football).

Take your time, City, and get the right man (or woman), together with a solid supporting staff. We’ll thank you for it in the long run.

Whilst I agree that PJ would be a good candidate I have to disagree with your logic. Indeed Jewell if far from a roaring success in all his roles having failed at both Sheffield Wednesday & Derby. He may not have been sacked at Derby but he is still in the same category as Peter Jackson in being a two time failure. Add to that he has only ever succeeded when he had copious amounts of money and the clear answer is no.

To that end you narrow the choice down to one stand out candidate – Peter Taylor – produces boring teams but very very effective.

I was talking to a Derby fan (I do sometimes do some research he said smiling) and he had nothing but great things to say about Jewell’s time believing that he set the club up well and was doing a good job until the sex tape came along and while I agree that Jewell won his promotions with lots of money his two Premiership survivals were done with poor budgets comparatively.

He is not unflawed, but he has a proven track record of achieving things and – like Taylor – the club needs someone who fits that profile. Then again all manager changes are risks, some less than others, and if this risk works out as well as Peter Withe’s time at Wimbledon (3 wins in 17) or Chris Hutchings at City then we will lose our football league place.

Lawn has had time – sitting in his office not talking to his manager – to consider a replacement for Stuart and during that time while he was reading the criticism on the Official Message Board he could have come up with a shortlist of people he wanted to have replace McCall.

Not only that but on Sunday he could have called the top name on that list and had a new manager in place on Monday afternoon.

Lawn has had enough time to plot a path to a new manager – McCall’s departure might be upsetting but it is in no way shocking – especially considering his time was not taken up with meetings with the current one to mean that Lawn must have have spent more than the days since Saturday thinking about this.

If Paul Jewell likes the life too much – and I see no reason why as a friend of Stuart McCall and one who we assume knows what is going on at City Jewell would want to work for a chairman who won’t talk to his manager for months – then Lawn should have known that before he he accepted McCall’s resignation.

If Jewell knocks him back, if Taylor knocks him back and so on and so on at what point to we get to the list of candidates who offer no improvement over keeping the status quo in place? I would suggest that with names like Peter Jackson circulating we are already there.

Lawn should have had an idea of someone he wanted to replace the manager he wanted rid of. He already has taken his time, the question is has he frittered that time away and now is he looking for the best man who comes to him, rather than going after the best man.

Paul Jewell might like the idea of a chairman that doesn’t talk to him, seeing as the last one talked too much!

Personally I think the chance of Jewell coming back is virtually non-existent and if it were to happen would be an enormous risk. What experience does he have of the lower leagues and working with next to no money?

Peter Taylor is my favourite at the moment. You can’t doubt his record and he’s available.

I have mixed feelings about Jacko, Windass is a definite no no as are the rest.

I think Knill fancies it with some of the things he’s said in the past and reading his record in last week’s programme he fits the bill. I doubt he’d want to leave a team in the promotion places right now but if they miss out he might come in the summer.

I had a conversation with my neighbour last night who is an Accrington Stanley season ticket holder. He said rumours are doing the rounds at their end that we’re after John Coleman. He also added that he doesn’t think Coleman has a contract at Accrington, just a week to week deal – so there might not be an issue of compensation there.

Liek I said, my choice is Peter Taylor. The football might not be up to much but the results would be. Whoever it is I’ll be 100% behind them, if not the board.

Is Peter Taylor genuinely an option? I would be chuffed as a fox on stilts if he came, I really rate him. I sadly can’t see it. I don’t know where Mark Lawn has been these past few difficult months, but if he was leaning towards leaning on McCall to go then hopefully he’s been busy lining up the replacement.

Doesn’t Dan Petrescu still owe us? He seems a fairly decent gaffer even if the Scots don’t want him!

It would strike me though that the problem is that Lawn has been leaning but the failure to have someone in place to take over – even for the four months we are talking about now – shows he has not been lining us up a replacement hence all this talk of interviews and candidates.

Some people think that Stuart McCall did not know his best team. I can guarantee that no one knows the best team at City better than McCall (or perhaps Jacobs, but that is an issue for another time) and certainly not the person who has not even met Zesh Rehman let alone considered switching him with Simon Ramsden but it is that person who is going to be picking the team on Saturday and I can’t help but think that in this situation where someone has four months and nineteen games to work with the squad then interviewing Tuesday is wasting time which could have been spent with a new man coming in yesterday.

It was be crass to appoint a new manager the day McCall left but this whole thing is crass. Crass and now dangerous.

The more i read about what or rather what wasn’t going on between Lawn and McCall the stranger the goings on at Bradford City Football Club seem.It seems to me that with a bit of support from the boardroom McCall would have stayed to the end of this season.If as seems likely this season was unsuccessful McCall would have resigned and would have told the joint chaimen in advance of that resignation..that he was going thus giving them plenty of time to line up a list of potential replacments.The way it’s actually panned out could destabilize the club unnecessarily and could have been handled far better .
It goes without saying that as soon as an appointment is made either on a four month trial or permanently,that person will get my 100% backing.

Can you shed any light on the possibility of Peter Taylor coming up to us?

Is there the vaguest glimmer of reality in that notion or is it totally far fetched?

It does seem a little pointless appointing an interim, if we’ve given up on the playoffs for this year, and it seems we aren’t going to be relegated (barring some bizarre events either way), why aren’t we just waiting until the end of the season.

I worry for Jacobs. The fans that were on McCall’s back were on Jacobs’ in equal measure, so God knows what it’ll be like now he’s in the firing line directly.

I don’t know much about Mark Lawn but I have just read his comments on the offical web-site in which he “made it clear that the board would have intervened if he (Stuart) had not made up his own mind”.

Lawn is basically saying that he was going to sack Stuart anyway. Whether this is true or not it is irrelevant – why say such a thing ? It smacks of him being disappointed that he didn’t get the chance to sack him and is really pathetically small-minded.

Lawn can’t win here. If he’d announced the new manager yesterday, he’d stand accused of dealing behind Stuart’s back. Let’s give him a chance. It seems to me that everyone desperately wanted Stuart to succeed, but however much we discuss the virtues of the man, he hasn’t done well this season. We are slipping at an alarming rate and so change was becoming inevitable. I don’t think you can blame the board if they had wanted to oust him. As for the candidates mentioned above Jackson is a definite no, never done anything anywhere; Taylor has a reasonable record, but also has a reasonable record of falling out with everyone. Jewell is a premiership manager so wouldn’t be interested. If we did have the money to get Jewell then I’d get Warnock instead. Awful bloke, but I’d be down the bookies tomorrow, backing us to get promoted this season.

If a change has become inevitable then it should have been planned for and the win for Lawn – just as it was for Fabio – was to quickly put unpleasantness behind us all and move on with a plan and a way to take the club forward. That has not happened and to extend the similarity John Terry has resigned on Thursday, on Friday Fabio has hobbled back into the country and mumbled something about sacking him anyway then said that he might give some the captaincy until the World Cup starts, and then change it, and he does not know who that will be yet.

Mark Lawn does not need a chance giving – he has taken this to be his chance and so far he is not taking it very well. This is not about having a go at Mark Lawn it is about wondering why he has made what seems an unnecessary decision without a plan as to what to do. I’ve no axe to grind with him, I just want to know why after promising stability he has – on the head of a pin – turned to massive uncertainty.

Football is a results business and very few people debate that point but rather than just trotting out those five words – “football is a results business” – how about we see if we can extend that sentence?

Can we add another five words like “Football is a results business, how do we achieve them?” and about about we stop trying to boil things down to the smallest possible nugget of information and say something like Football is a results business and every team in it is trying to get them and because of this multi-polar situation one must look beyond the idea that a single club has the ability to get good or bad results in isolation and start trying to think of ways to get results over other teams who want them equally as much as we do and start talking about how we can give ourselves a competitive advantage that might achieve those results?

Taylor was in charge of Wycombe and has reportedly been interested in the Notts County role, this proves he doesn’t believe league 2 football to be beneath him. Furthermore with the state that Notts County are in these days I think any interest in that job will of cooled. Therefore, why not Bradford, we are hopefully in a better position than most sides to take a club through the divisions, hopefully back to the championship. The only stumbling block is whether we can afford him, and I’m not sure but would Wycombe really be in a position to offer him far higher wages than we can?

Best option for me as he has contacts throughout the leagues and is a proven success at this level. Unlike Jewell, who probably won’t know anything about lower league teams or players. Remember when Mccall came and he said that he had to take advice off other people when it came to players because he didn’t have a clue.

I disagree with the assertion that Mike Walker “had no idea how” he made Norwich successful. Of course he did. After some time with the club, he finally got things to click and punch way above their weight with the right players and systems (he dictated the Canarie play a bona fide sweeper formation for an amazing European campaign). Did Jewell, or many managers at the level of success we’re talking about, also not know how he got Bradford to work for a bright period?

There’s probably something in the fact that Walker had no idea how to recreate it at Everton, but just as likely he did ‘know’, but just couldn’t do it. Personally, he would never get success with a team he inherited when he arrived (due to his limits as a manager) and he was never going to get to set up and fine tune his own band of players which was essential for him to do well…

You could well be right Mat. Mike Walker remains a poster boy for the idea of the manager who seems incapable of reproducing what he had at one place at another and perhaps it is a little harsh on the man but the point that Walker represents – don’t appoint a manager who has not been able to do what he did at one club at other clubs if you want a low risk appointment.

BfB

In 2016 BfB is almost exclusively written by Michael Wood. There is a Twitter feed at @boyfrombrazil but it is not often used for conversation. There is a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/boyfrombrazil but again it is not often used. There is a tendency to stay out of discussion about the articles but if you have a question or a query the best way to get it addressed is to send a mail to mail@boyfrombrazil.co.uk.